I knew this day would come eventually, but it doesn’t make leaving any easier.

I have been at SolarWinds almost exactly 5 years to the day, and half of that time I have spent devoted to you as your community manager. I want to thank you for being a part of my day every day for the past 2+ years and for letting me be a part of yours. When I joined THWACK I was a self-proclaimed nerd, but I’m leaving here a geek. I’ll never forget the dozens of missions we’ve been through, the SWUGs I’ve traveled to, the inside jokes that come up in every live chat (#DarkThemeForever), and the endless messages I’ve received from all of you. Thank you.

Before I sign off, I also need to publicly thank Danielle Higgins and Ben Garves. These two have been the best team members a wabbott could ever ask for. I could never thank Danielle enough for taking a chance on me and offering me my dream job. She trusted me with her former role and I hope I made her proud. To Ben, I want to express my gratitude for your humor, your willingness to always lend a helping hand, and for planning the most epic brainstorm meetings I’ve ever been a part of. Thank you both for everything, truly.

The age-old question, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” has long been answered with occupations such as: firefighter, ballerina, doctor, or princess. Why, you may wonder, does systems administrator rarely make the cut? As a critical member of the organization they support, surely a more rewarding and interesting career than SysAdmin can’t possibly exist!

While we know how exciting, versatile, and important our jobs truly are, do the people closest to us understand? When you get a text message from your remote monitoring system during a soccer game or dance recital, what do you tell your kids? If you break from analyzing system logs to enjoy a family dinner, how do you explain that a log is more than a chopped up tree trunk? Even with all your tireless explaining, how many times have you heard a version of this phrase: “My mom does something with computers…I think”?

In honor of Systems Administrator Day this year, we want to know what your family thinks you do 24/7, rain or shine, day or night. Whether it’s “Stuff on a computer,” “Emails their friends,” “Fixes problems,” or “Uhh…technology?”, let us know by July 18, and we’ll give you 250 THWACK points—and, if necessary, moral support from your fellow techies who do understand that you have the coolest job in the world.

Monitoring, identifying issues, troubleshooting…these words are all-too-familiar, and their associated tasks take up most of your time as a technology professional. But, what if they didn’t? Imagine a world where you don't have to solve multiple problems on a daily basis—a world where you could use your technology skills to do anything…create a whole new infrastructure optimized for your organization, plan and enjoy a much-deserved family vacation, or even use blockchain or AI to solve world issues. Anything!

If you had more free time, how you would use your technical knowledge and insight to move your organization, your life, community, and the world forward? Tell us!

THWACKsters, before we can launch this mission, we need to go through a launch status check. We’ve never lost a THWACKster on a mission, and we’re sure not going to lose one on my watch! Failure is not an option.

When I call out the system you give me a go/no go, got it?

Applications?Go! Everything has been checked with cross-stack data correlation.

Servers?Go! We’re seeing all green on our AppStack™ Dashboard!

Virtual machines?Go! VMAN shows that we resolved the sprawl issues we were seeing during testing.

Storage?Go! Storage Resource Monitor shows we have plenty of capacity for this mission.

All systems go!

Catch you on the flip side.

JULY MONTHLY MISSION

Use the mission’s resources to complete the tasks and answer the questions for a chance to win!

Correctly answer each question during the week and you'll be entered for a chance to win the weekly prize.

Correctly answer all 20 questions over the course of the month and you'll be entered for a chance to win the grand prize:

Take a screenshot of the Orion Maps feature showing 2+ nodes mapped with ADM data (example)

Submit your screenshot below

MISSION RULES

A new question will open every day (Monday - Friday) starting on July 2, 2018. Once a question has opened, it will remain open until July 29, 2018 at 11:59 p.m. CDT. Check the schedule below for exact open/close times.

SolarWinds solutions are rooted in our deep connection to our user base in the THWACK® online community. More than 150,000 members are here to solve problems, share technology and best practices, and directly contribute to our product development process. Learn more today by joining.

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